


Bearings

by cynthia_arrow (thesilverarrow)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-09
Updated: 2012-08-09
Packaged: 2017-11-11 18:27:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,785
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/481530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesilverarrow/pseuds/cynthia_arrow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A missing scene from <i>Order of the Phoenix.</i> Remus and Sirius talk about Harry and his friends, but the conversation keeps circling back to them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bearings

**Author's Note:**

> This story was originally published on Livejournal many, many moons ago. I'm simply archiving it here.

Remus had gotten used to the drafty, creaky, utterly dark old house the Order had mostly succeeded in turning into a livable headquarters. He'd accustomed himself to the difficulties of the place—the musty smell and the strange echoes and the narrow halls—as much as he'd learned to deal with the myriad and often just as difficult people using it as a halfway house. There was only one thing in the house (besides Kreacher, and one learned to tune out his litany of ill will) whose mood was so endlessly changing to new and more omnipresent forms of bad weather that one could only endure.

Of course, this bitter and contemplative person was also the one most likely to blow off the top of a person's head with a sudden smile or a wicked, plotting smirk, so he was rather more bewildering than actually bothersome. Always had been.

When Remus paused in the threshold, he saw that Sirius sat in a chair perpendicular to the fireplace, where a fire had apparently been burning but had been allowed to go out. It left the room dark, the air close. The scene was either genuinely contemplative or rather melodramatically somber, but somehow befitting a man who seemed anymore to be single-handedly staging some Muggle play, maybe Hamlet…as played by the wise-cracking Fool from Twelfth Night.

Back in their Hogwarts days, the world had been a stage play, too, one perhaps more colorful, filled with exciting battles that left causalities temporarily littering the stage. And Remus had played his role under a slyly demanding director, sometimes resentfully but in general glad to be cast at all. As he walked into the room, looking down at Sirius's back, he knew his own role had always been important. A man like Sirius couldn't go on too long without supporting players. Or, apparently, he could—but at great cost.

Sirius glanced over at him, giving him a wan smile, then resumed his brooding, but less like it was a show, somehow, even though he now had an audience. 

After a protracted silence, Sirius said, "I suppose you think I'm being reckless with him, too."

"No."

Sirius's head whipped around, but he merely raised his eyebrows wearily.

Remus let his hands fall on the back of the tall, stiff-backed couch separating him from the rest of the room. Old velvet, worn out like everything in the house. Remus said, "You forget—I've seen what the boy's capable of. I happen to think he should be treated like an adult, given that he might very well be—no, he is a target. He needs to be able to respond to the world as the very real place it is, whether we like that or not."

Sirius nodded without turning, then got up and prodded at the fire, humming to himself as it refused to do more than weakly hiss. Rather than point his wand at it to reignite it, he took up a log, one of those that Remus had been convinced was merely decorative, and placed it on top of the pile of smoldering ashes. He sat down again, keeping one eye on the fireplace and the other on Remus.

Sirius smiled and said, "I still can't believe you taught a third year to produce a patronus."

"He was no ordinary third year."

He nodded, lounging against the chair. "They really should have kept you on at the Mausoleum. They have got to be the stupidest…"

Remus gave him a weary but heavy glare. There were full moons and worried parents, on top of a general blindness that was now so pervasive it threatened their world almost as much as Voldemort's return did. And none of theses solutionless miseries were anything he cared to dredge up.

So he waved his hand. "Well."

"Well, indeed," Sirius replied softly, then he set his mouth in a hard line. "But if they won't thank you for being the only person to care fuck-all about protecting those children, I will."

"Sirius."

His eyes were wide, rather commanding. When he meant to be heard, he always was. "You watched over him when I couldn't, and you didn't have to. You didn't have to risk so much."

"Don't you know I would do anything for that boy? Or do you think you have the market cornered on loyalty?"

He frowned, either at the mention of their long-dead friends or the accusation. "No," he replied, then he got up abruptly and stood with his back to the fire, which had surprisingly begun to up to something respectable, something that provided a little warmth to the room, at least in the glow it cast.

When Remus just stood there staring at him and not speaking, Sirius fidgeted a little and said in mock melodrama, "So you don't think I'm the worst guardian in the entire history of the wizarding world?"

"On paper, perhaps. In papers, too. I'm just thankful he's not as… foolhardy as you are."

Sirius raised his eyebrows, questioning and suppressing an amused smirk. 

Remus said, "Going out…? As the dog…?"

"As me," he replied with a chuckle.

"As dog you, who is actually a frightening bit more cautious than you are sometimes, now that I think about it. You and James always did delight in doing things the hard way."

"Being a dog is not hard. It's a hell of a lot easier than being Sirius Black just now. And just because we sometimes made your life difficult…"

"Save it. You know I'm not at all sorry to have gotten tangled up with the two of you. I wouldn't be standing here now if I hadn't," he said quite seriously. 

He marveled at the way those words made Sirius scowl slightly. It was funny how that kind of turn could annoy the man when it was his own usual tactic: perfectly light conversation, then all of a sudden a flow of words that could be as disarming as any Expelliarmus, words that tugged on the deep roots of friendship that clutched around his heart; ties that grounded him but also occasionally wounded, if only for the way intentions and fidelity sometimes didn't translate into success and safety. 

Sirius had always had a way of striking deep, just with his eyes or the inflection of his voice. And his talent for sudden reversals came out just as much in his seduction. With him, it was always random but purposeful encounters that left Remus a bit obliterated. Remus was not the sort to pick up and leave off that quickly. Of course, he had to admit that the leaving off was of only the physical, never of Moony and Padfoot. 

He suddenly wondered what the man would do if he got bold like that with him. But he knew exactly how Sirius would react because Remus had done that from time to time, played the insistent, surprising one, and Sirius liked that perhaps even more than he liked to be the instigator…of anything; at least he did when he trusted a person. But that had been then, and this Sirius Black was a different Padfoot altogether. 

Remus said, "Not that I stood a chance against you two, anyway. Many a charming and persistent rogue has…shifted a person's priorities before."

"Priorities that involved so very little actual ambition."

"Safe. But, yes."

Sirius got quiet again for a moment, then he shook his head, amused and musing. "Have you watched them, Remus? The Granger girl was apparently on a path to be as dull as you were first year until Harry—"

"Harry is not James," Remus snapped. "In temperament, in ability. You must see it. And these children are different, live in a different—"

"Yes," he said, putting up his hand as if in surrender. "I know. I do see it. They've a focus I can't believe we'd've had."

"They cause far less trouble for its own sake than they do in generally saving the world."

Sirius nodded, but then he smiled to himself. "Apparently, though, they're not saints." Then he took a step away from the fire, toward Remus, as if speaking more confidentially. Such things made the man a good storyteller, riveting even when he had nothing whatsoever to say. He continued: "Did you know the youngest Weasley boy once cursed himself with vomiting slugs in an attempt to defend the beautiful almost future dullard's honor?"

"What?"

"The spell was meant for Malfoy's sneering little platinum spawn, but it backfired spectacularly."

"Vomiting slugs?"

"Vomiting slugs. Unfortunately for him, he has a wicked imagination."

Remus giggled. He said, "He can be quite a bit overprotective of his friends. Of course, it's a little more pronounced when it's about Hermione—"

"Because she's a girl." 

"One I wouldn't get into a duel with in a couple of years. But, yes, probably. Very much like you used to be nearly irrational about Lily walking around after dark. At any rate, he's just as overprotective of Harry."

Sirius smiled. "And it runs both ways, from what I've seen. Do you remember hearing about the Tri-Wizard Tournament, that dreadful episode in the lake, how they picked a person attached to each of the champions for them to rescue?"

"Harry's person was Ron."

Sirius nodded, then he raised his eyebrows. "Do you think…?"

"What?"

"Shall I spell it out for you?" he replied, now letting a leer creep over his face as his eyes raked up and down Remus's body. 

Damn him. Remus had to will his body to not respond to that. It wasn't difficult, not with the way the stress lately had been muffling everything about his life, but, really, he shouldn't have to be talking to his body at all.

"Not a chance," Remus said, shaking his head.

"You say that as if it would be awful or something." He narrowed his eyes, affecting annoyance but only in disguise of evaluating Remus's expression. Then they popped open again. "Oh, well. Time will tell. Anyway, it does make me rather wish they had the desire to be animagi. I'm certain they could do it. I admit to having no earthly clue how to guess about Harry's form, but Ron Weasley, if he could manage…"

"Squirrel? Hare?"

Sirius grimaced and shook his head, then he grinned and pronounced: "Dog." Remus couldn't image the odd face he must have given him, because Sirius added with an open smile, "Perhaps a Labrador?"

Remus couldn't help but giggle again. It was actually beginning to sound plausible. 

Sirius added, "You're so skeptical. I shudder to know what you thought I would manifest as."

"I believe James once predicted a dwarf dragon of some sort, the kind with wings ungainly enough that it would perpetually knock things over just trying to…walk up the staircase or, Merlin help us, practice spells in the common room." 

"And you?"

He said flatly, "My inner animal was chosen for me."

"Not that," he said with a wave of his hand. "No. I meant, what did you think I would be?"

"I didn't know. Sometimes I'm not sure I really understood you until after we saw what you changed into."

It was now Sirius's turn to stand there and silently regard him. If he was the master at getting attention, he was also the master at giving it, and that sort of attention always had a way of undoing Remus. "You know," Sirius finally said, low and quietly, crossing the room toward him, "I can't imagine that you would've been anything other than something strong and half wild, regardless of your condition." 

"Oh?" Remus replied. It was all he could say, with the way his breath caught in his throat.

Sirius's shins came to rest against the couch; he was now close enough that Remus could see the wrinkles starting to spread from his eyes, his mouth. He was perhaps even more mesmerizing as an adult than he has been as a charmingly difficult teenager. 

Studying him in return, Sirius said quietly, "There was always a little too much hiding behind those eyes of yours." He smiled. "James often thought you were secretly plotting his death."

"Well, apparently James was highly skeptical of the both of us."

"We were rather moody blokes back then. In different ways, of course. And highly unpredictable."

"And more to the point, we didn't have breasts."

He snorted. "Also a problem, which, by the way, doesn't seem quite a problem for Harry. Perhaps it's one of the ways he's a bit more like his godfather than like James."

"You've only seen him around Hermione. And Ginny Weasley, which tells me you're not being entirely observant. You didn't spend the better part of a school year watching him get impressively tongue-tied around the giggling female horde."

"Indeed, I did not. Oh, the burden of being famous," he said as his face stretched into and yawn and he came around the couch as if he were finally going to head up to bed.

"I'd call you infamous more than famous, Sirius."

His head snapped up, the mirth vanishing from his eyes for a moment. "I meant him," he said. "It must be strange… No, I take that back. It must actually be rather awful never knowing who your friends are, who wants to be with you just because you're the Boy Who Lived."

"Or who wants to kill you for the same reason. Thankfully, we never had that particular brand of trouble."

Sirius came around behind him, then. He paused, leaning over to suddenly breathe across the back of his neck, warm and moist. With his lips tickling at the hairs on Remus's nape, he purred, "Is that why we made so much wonderful trouble of our own, Moony?"

Remus felt his heart begin to throb up against his ribs, and he struggled not to squirm or do anything else to disclose how easily Sirius had got to him, and quite purposefully, although he had no idea why. Sirius was still playing his old games. Didn't he realize the time for games had passed? 

Flustered and more than a little annoyed, Remus let him get through the doorway before he said evenly, "You always were a tease, and one with the patience and subtlety of a Bludger."

Sirius turned back around slowly. He stepped forward and propped himself up in the doorway on both his elbows, his torso curved slightly at the hip. His eyes burned down into Remus's: "Not teasing." 

Remus tried to hold his gaze, but it was dreadfully hard to do with such a twisting in his gut, just from that look. Still, he kept his eyes on Sirius's, trying to make sense of how after so many years, after so much confusion and change, Sirius could suddenly pick up right where things left off, replacing a drafty castle with a drafty house, teenage angst for real adult peril.

And how taking up old feelings again could, deep down, not bother Remus in the slightest. It simply felt right; because it occurred to him as he looked at those wrinkles around Sirius's sober eyes that what he felt now was a whole different sort of apprehension but also an entirely different level of need. More importantly, he knew Sirius felt it, too.

Sirius stepped forward, then, and closed his hand around Remus's arm, and he seemed like the same old Padfoot, just transfigured, the burden of years making perhaps a difference like that between the man and the dog, different faces for the same soul. 

Sirius said, "Of all the names you've called me out of your extensive and often harrowing vocabulary, you've never compared me to a Bludger before." Then his face erupted in a smile that made Remus more nervous than he could remember being in a great while. It was amusement, and it was mischief, and it was just the sort of mockery designed to get him exactly what he wanted, because no one could ignore or resist such a face. He added: "High praise, Moony, because you always were so very bewildered by Quidditch."

Remus didn't bother to say it was because he was typically playing Quidditch with a mad person who also happened to look indomitably sexy even when he was being knocked off balance or off his broom, which he often was, much more often than Remus, actually.

Remus grinned and replied, "It's just that it sometimes takes me moment to get my bearings." 

That was all the warning Sirius had before Remus stepped in front of him and knocked him back against the doorframe, kissing him long and hard before he could get another word in edgewise.


End file.
